Spring Break
Obama pitches stimulus plan on prime-time TV
Associated Press
Issue date: 2/9/09 Section: News
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"Doing nothing is not an option," Obama warned during a town hall meeting in Elkhart, Ind., where unemployment has passed 15 percent.
Speedy passage of legislation to pump federal money into the crippled economy, once seemingly assured with bipartisan support, has become a much heavier lift and a major test of Obama's young presidency.
On the day that an $838 billion version of the legislation cleared a crucial test vote in the Senate, Obama warned darkly of the consequences he contended would result from inaction. By a 61-36 margin, the package was advanced toward a vote on final Senate passage Tuesday - with all but three Republican senators opposing it.
"Our nation will sink into a crisis that at some point we may be unable to reverse," he said. Officials have frequently suggested the current recession, which has catapulted the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent and erased 3.6 million jobs, is the worst U.S. economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But no one has been suggesting the economic downturn could be permanent.
The Midwest community where Obama traveled Monday has been hammered by job losses in its mainstay industry of recreational vehicle makers. The unemployment rate soared to 15.3 percent in one northern Indiana county in December, up 10.6 percentage points from a year earlier. White House planners wanted Obama surrounded by everyday Americans already reeling from the effects of the nation's economic woes, with the clear implication that many more towns across the nation could end up the same if nothing is done.
The president then was capping the day with his first formal, extended news conference, where he was fielding queries from the White House press corps amid the grandeur of the East Room - less than a mile from the ongoing debate on Capitol Hill. Most important: he was doing so at the prime TV-watching hour, to be piped into millions of living rooms across the country.
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